Stalking Horse: Dark Horse’s Digital Pricing Controversy

It is the twenty-first century, and it has been a week, so that must mean that someone tried to do something tricky about digital comics that pissed almost everybody off.

Earlier this week, Dark Horse Comics announced that, like DC and Marvel’s Ultimate line, they were going to make their books available digitally on the same day as the print copies. The problem is that they didn’t specify any details about their pricing model, which, for older books that they’ve made available digitally to date, is generally a buck ninety-nine, compared to the normally $2.99 print editions.

And then the comics Internet shit its tubes.

Here in New England, where we were the first to tell King George he could suck it and know full well that Mike Richardson has no Redcoats, Jetpack Comics and Larry’s Comics announced they were boycotting all Dark Horse comics except for special orders. Meaning that if some preteen girl wandered into those stores looking for an issue of Buffy Season 9 they would be leaving empty-handed and would probably wind up purchasing yet another copy of Twilight, making the world a generally shittier place for those of us who only twinkle in the sunlight when on fire.

Dark Horse, probably realizing that they wouldn’t survive long living off back residuals from Timecop, quickly released a statement clarifying that their day-and-date digital releases would be priced the same as their print editions, and expressing regret for the miscommunication, confusion, and everything else they ever did besides Son of The Mask.

So: problem solved, right? We’ve covered the publishers, the retailers… no one’s left to chime in, correct?

I’ve had series cancelled recently.  I’ve had pitches rejected for financial reasons.  I’ve seen my editors laid off. I’ve taken page rate cuts (a LOT of us have).  My income from royalties have dropped.  Most comic shops don’t carry my books.  I have very good reasons to suspect my career in comics may be drastically reduced in the near future. Things just plain suck, but I’ve taken these hits, figuring that everyone else is having hard times too.  I don’t mind bleeding a little, and one ray of hope has been digital, the potential it has to maybe, just maybe, keep some of us going through these lean times.  But like I said, we can never explore that potential to even just see if its there, as long as current pricing stay locked in.

So I’ll have to bleed a little more so that others can bleed a little less.  The problem with that, to really keep abusing this metaphor, is that eventually I’ll just keel over and die from it.

Now, Brian Wood just had pretty much all his books at DC cancelled and managed to pick up work at Marvel and Dark Horse, so while I don’t know the man, it’s possible that this is just coming from a place of anxiety. It’s not enough to compain, Brian, you need to propose a solution!

Oh, you have one?

When I thought my Dark Horse comics were to be sold digitally at 1.99, I devised a plan to make the print singles a luxury object specifically for the benefit of the retailer community, to make it a unique book with truly added-value content so that the two formats would not be in competition for the same product.  So that the “higher priced” print single would be justified in the eyes of retailers and readers.

Now, I don’t know if this is a solution or not, but I can tell you this: I love Ed Brubaker’s Criminal. And even though it historically has been reprinted in damn handsome hardcover editions, I will still always buy the individual issues because of the excellent backmatter, where authors and celebrities write about crime stories they love, and which aren’t reprinted in the collections. And the concept of producing collector / enthusiast physical versions of media widely consumed as digital is something that’s worked for some artists.

Either way, it’s something to think about over the next couple of days… which should be about how long we have before something about digital comics takes another dump in our Intertubes.